South End Push & Profit review

Push & Profit

by Douglas Levy

SOUTH END, September 14, 1993

It’s often difficult to sit through any album that is almost an hour long and has only eight songs, but like Dream Theater’s masterful debut Images and Words, Discipline also succeeds in managing to fit just the correct manifold rhythms and variations without sacrificing much else. The ride is much like jazz fusion with metallic interludes, and most of the ideas appear to be stemmed from a more surreal renaissance period. Not straying too far out beyond ’90s understandings and fascinations–”The Nursery Year,” being a rather mordant parable of a madman, set against a scathing yet soothing instrumental–the disc shines at the right moments, like the rigorous journey through “Carmilla” and the upbeat “Faces of the Petty” and “The Reasoning Wall.” To say “Push and Profit” is one of the more meaningful releases heard from a local band is one thing, but proclaiming that this doesn’t fit in (refreshingly, of course) with anything the Motor City has produced in the last 15 years is the reality. (Strung Out, P.O. Box 1587, Royal Oak, MI 48068-1587)